The goal of this report is to inform schools, families and communities about the potential of personalized learning and empower them with ways to support the shift to student-centered learning. The authors define personalized learning and describe why it matters. They highlight examples of personalized learning in action to show how personalized…

Although competency-based education (CBE) has existed since the early 1970s adult-focused degree programs, interest in CBE has spiked in recent years due to the increased attention on higher education affordability and accountability. This article reviews the extant literature on CBE to address the following questions: (a) What are the definitions…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), enacted in December 2015, presents a historic opportunity for the United States to begin to transform K-12 education toward personalized, student-centered learning. Across the country, state leaders are shifting from a focus on compliance toward continuous improvement and systemic change, in order to support…

Competency education is attracting significant interest as a promising way to help meet our national priority of ensuring that all young people are ready for college and careers. In competency-based schools, students advance at different rates, based on their ability to demonstrate mastery of learning objectives. Teachers provide customized…

New York State can set up an accountability program, but to be successful it must rest on the following principles. Teachers, schools, and districts should be responsible only for initiating the best processes of education, not for the outcomes. Judgments of accountability must be nonthreatening and must result in a cooperative effort to help…

Basic definitions, conceptual clarity, and analyses of the organizational and social implications of various competency-based education approaches are badly needed. (Author/EB)

Defines skill, performance, and competency, relates the concept of competency based education to the intent of the Hart Bill, the Stull Bill or AB 65, i.e., to insure that students master and perform basic skills of communication and computation, and considers some underlying assumptions that are the basis of educational legislation. (Author/RK)

Advantages and disadvantages of commonly used forms of measurement are reviewed, and an approach for assessing overall competence of the pharmacy student is discussed conceptually, based on a multiple-measurement method involving review of student performance in real practice contexts and observation in simulations of practice. (Author/LBH)

This guide is designed to help college students understand educational states, portfolio assessment, competency matrices, and self-evaluation as it relates to the presentation of technical materials in the engineering sciences. Part 1 discusses definitions of education and learning, the concept of lifelong learning, and educational states…

Unlike traditional objective testing methods, alternative assessments encourage student involvement in real-life problems and challenges. The teacher's role is to help students determine and identify assessment tasks and criteria, participate in ongoing assessment of work in progress, and propose alternative ways to meet criteria. This article…

This manual is intended to guide Kentucky vocational educators in designing and implementing a program of occupational and English language instruction that will efficiently and sensitively meet the special needs of students with limited English proficiency (LEP). The step-by-step guide aims to identify teachers' existing capabilities that may be…

In Australia the usual evaluation of whether a student will perform adequately as a doctor is a subjective evaluation of his clinical performance, usually at the completion of five or six years at medical school. The evaluation is performed on an inadequate and uncontrolled patient sample and appears to be subject to many errors. Recent work…

Many people believe that a lack of clear goals has limited the quality of education in America, where local school districts have traditionally been responsible for setting educational standards. Working in isolation, schools have failed to reach consensus on goals and standards, and teachers are hard-pressed to motivate students to achieve. The…

This guide is a developmental document that contains working definitions of terms and commentaries on them. Intended for those working or interested in vocational education and training (VET) at any level, the guide introduces the concepts and terminology associated with work-based learning in VET, offers assistance to readers trying to understand…

This interim report presents the framework for classifying competency-based initiatives developed by the NPEC (National Postsecondary Education Cooperative) Working Group. Section 1 presents a structure for classifying competency initiatives based upon student progression into, within, and from postsecondary education. Key applications of…